Guillermo Del Toro Takes on Beauty and the Beast With Emma Watson

After years of being weighed down by The Hobbit and the headaches of waiting for that production to move forward, Guillermo Del Toro is wasting no more time. He’s in the midst of shooting Pacific Rim, and is now set up to do Beast – which, according to Variety, is a new take on the classic Beauty and the Beastlegend as made famous cinematically by Jean Cocteau and Walt Disney. Harry Potterstar Emma Watson is in final negotiations to be the lead.

The script is being worked on by Andrew Davies, who’s best know for the Bridget Jones’s Diaries movies. It’s probably meant to have a more feminist take on the material, though that could also be said of the Disney version. That version owed much to Cocteau’s film, which is available from the Criterion Collection for those curious. Though Del Toro will surely put his own weird stamp on the material, it seems likely he will draw more from the French version than the animated one.

Of course the story of Beauty and the Beast was rebooted recently in the guise of Beastly, which tried to do a modern take on the material. If you’re curious about that one, it should be in numerous discount bins across the country.

Damon worked in the film business as a Film Buyer for a theater chain for many years, which gives him an interesting perspective on the numbers. He's written for Collider, Chud, Screencrush, The DVD Journal and Binaryflix online, and was published by The New York Times and Willamette Week, along with his college, high school and middle school papers.